Hybrid Working

Whether we like it or not, Hybrid working will become the new normal. As we gradually return to the office we will find that more of us will adopt a form of hybrid working. This means you will work a few days in the office and a few days at home. The good thing from the employees’ perspective is they can arrange the office days to suit their personal lives and the whole process will give them a better work-life balance.

From a work perspective, it becomes more difficult and there are various challenges facing the management team and in particular the IT department.

If you want your employees to be as or more productive away from the office you have to ensure that you have the right procedures and processes in place to do their job remotely.

1. Information Technology

Without the correct level of IT and we are talking about hardware and access to the correct systems then any hybrid working is not going to work. Many issues during covid have come from not being able to speak to people because they are out of the office. So the first thing is to make sure your employees have a laptop that they can take wherever they are working. A phone is a next requirement and we are not necessarily talking about a mobile phone. Most employees have a landline phone number, with Softphone technology, you can answer a call to your office line on a laptop by utilising a softphone. All you need is a headset.

And finally, ensure you have the correct level of cybersecurity to allow all users to securely access your network to get access to the company data.

2. Process and Procedures

As work processes have developed over the years, a lot is still in a manual format. This makes hybrid working very difficult. You can only truly work effectively at home if you have automated processes.

If you have documents that are still manual then the only way to get them to your employees is by email. We all know that the number of emails that we all get is getting out of control, so if you are adding to this you risk delay and bottlenecks. If you automate, you remove these issues.

3. Communication

One thing we humans like about office work is the interaction with fellow workmates and it is good for team morale to speak to colleagues, particularly if you are working on team projects. So ensure you have the correct systems in place to allow this to happen. With Microsoft Teams or video conferencing, this can happen quite easily. With Teams, you can just call for a quick chat with a friend and colleague.